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Friday, January 30, 2015

My five-year-old's alternative kindergarten teacher has
been working with the kids on phonics and I'm blown away by how fast my son is
picking them up. While he's pretty good at remembering each letter's sound, I
wondered how he'd do identifying the beginning sounds of words.

Then I grabbed the letter cards I made for the Alphabet Blackout game (the link to download them free from Google Drive is in the blog
article). I only gave him the twelve letters that started the words for each
object on the table.

It was up to him to circle the table and place the
correct letter card next to each object. He worked so hard to get them right,
slowly saying the words out loud and then looking through his small stack of
cards.

He only struggled with the orange (O) and yarn (Y). All
the others came to him fairly easily.

We'll definitely be doing this activity again. It's
cheap, simple, and requires 5 minutes of prep, which is perfect for a busy
parent!

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

We went to a local manufacturing museum recently. The
boys loved it. One of the hands-on exhibits had them pulling weights attached
to a pulley to simulate horsepower. They roamed the museum but kept coming back
to pull those ropes.

That moment precipitated this one.

We made our own pulley with supplies we had at home.

Supplies

paper punch

empty ribbon spool

empty, clean small plastic bowl (e.g. empty fruit cup,
etc.)

yarn

pencil or small wooden dowel rod

tape (optional)

small objects to put in the bowl

stairway

Step 1

Punch three holes around the edge of the bowl, making an
invisible triangle between them.

Step 2

Tie short lengths of yarn onto each hole. Gather them
about 4 inches above the bowl and tie together. Make sure the bowl is level. Snip the excess
yarn.

Step 3

Tie a long length of yarn onto the knot binding the three
yarn lengths. Wind the yarn around the empty ribbon spool.

Step 4

Add something to the bucket (e.g. LEGOs, erasers, etc.).

Step 5

Thread the pencil through the spool hole and place
between two stair spindles.

Step 6

Use tape to secure the ends of the pencil, if desired.
(This was especially helpful for my 5-year-old.)

Step 7

Regulate the speed with which you lower the bowl by
holding the end of the yarn and slowly releasing it, making the spool spin.

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventuresthat you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, home school, or on the weekend!

When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up, you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board and feature an image on our After School Party in the upcoming weeks!

Friday, January 23, 2015

I'm taking continuing education night classes in graphic
design. A few nights into the class, we spent three hours on color theory. It was
crazy cool and I had an inkling my boys might find it interesting too.

I made them a fun interactive book to complete. It
explains the color wheel, primary and secondary colors, complementary colors,
and tints and shades. We used our DIY marbleized paper as the cover!

For those of you who don't want to mess with figuring out
how to reinsert the paper properly in the printer, here's
another PDF for you to download. You can toss the cover page and just
staple the pages in the corner like a short stack of activity pages.

Print pages on heavyweight cardstock since some pages
require painting. Trim them along the dotted line. Use an unconventional paper
punch to punch a hole in the page with the color wheel spinner as well as the
arrow spinner. Cut out the spinner and attach to the color wheel with a brad.

To make the pages into a book, arrange the pages and fold
in the center. Carefully and loosely, trying
as best you can not to crease the pages too much, fold under the back half of
the book so it can fit in a stapler. Staple twice along the fold.

Now hand over the book and some art supplies and watch
your kids learn color theory!

Note: If you're doing the book in one sitting, I
recommend only using paint on the tints and shades pages, so that there's no
down time for drying. My boys mixed the paint colors on the equations pages and
then colored the answers in marker. I also used small clipboards to hold the pages open while they painted.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Our art projects have to have a serious wow factor. My
boys don't have the interest or the patience to work on a piece gradually over
several days. Mixed media that seems as much like magic as it does art is right
up their alley.

Marbleizing paper is so much fun and surprisingly easy,
too!

Before I provide a supplies list and instructions, I need
to issue a disclaimer. This project stinks (literally, notfiguratively). You HAVE to work in a
well-ventilated area. What you can't see in my pictures are the two windows
that I threw wide open to dissipate the fumes. Nail polish smells B-A-D.

Supply List

Watercolor paper (or another paper of heavy weight)

Nail polish in as many colors as you'd like

A disposable pan that your paper will fit into

Water

Plastic to cover your work surface

Gloves

Well-ventilated space

Tool to swirl the colors with (we used the wooden ends of
paintbrushes)

Instructions

1. Fill your pan with an inch or two of water.

2. Gently drizzle nail polish in the pan. The goal is to
pour it thin enough that it sits on the surface of the water.

3. Add another color (or two or three).

4. Drag your tool through the nail polish until you get
the desired effect.

5. Softly lay your paper on top of the water and press
the corners slightly to make sure they pick up the color.

5. Carefully peel the paper off the water and set face-up
to dry. We let our marbleized masterpieces dry for a full 24 hours and since
they were still pretty stinky, I put them on our screened in porch outside. The
more time passes, the less fragrance they emit.

There are lots of opportunities for learning with this
activity. Talk to your kids about the history of marbleized paper, ask questions
like "why does some of the nail polish stay on top of the water?," "Why
does it cling to the paper?," etc.

Aren't they stunning?

Stop back later this week to see
how we are using our marbleized paper!

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventuresthat you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, home school, or on the weekend!

When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up, you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board and feature an image on our After School Party in the upcoming weeks!

Friday, January 16, 2015

Our town has a small art museum. The word museum may be stretching it a bit. It's more of a large collection in a public building. Regardless, it's some great art.

Our past trips have been a whirlwind. $10 for entry for our family and only 10 minutes were spent. My boys don't REALLY looked at the art. That's the problem. They act like it's a race to get from one one room to the next.

I cooked up this fun activity to slow the pace a bit. My sons both like look-and-find books, so I had a hunch this would be a hit.

I was right.

Download the 2-page PDF I made from Google Drive here.Page 2 contains a template to trace and cut out the squares.

I made some printable cards. Then I went to the museum's website and printed photos of the collection. If they were small, I right-clicked, saved the photo to my desktop and then printed the photo larger. Then I cut small squares from each photo and glued them to the card.

It was up to my sons to find the details from their cards in the paintings and sculpture in the museum exhibitions.

I put each of their cards (they were the same so they could work together) on a mini clipboard and gave them each a pencil to cross through the images they found. (Note: make sure writing utensils are okay in your museum. Most allow pencils, not pens or markers.)

They spent more time looking at the art, but still missed a few. I gave them hints. "I think you missed something in this room," I said.

The thrill of the hunt was exhilarating. This was our best museum visit yet!

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Microbes are fascinating. They are constantly changing the world around us and yet they are teeny tiny - technically, they're smaller than teeny tiny. My sons played a rousing game of memory with some fun microbe graphic cards I created. This drove the point home that microbes vary greatly in shape and appearance.

Before we started to play, we read the perfect book to explain what microbes are, look like, live, and do. Even if you never do this activity with your kids, check your library for Tiny Creature: The World of Microbes by Nicola Davies.It explains what seems impossible for kids to understand so extremely well, with engaging illustrations and explanations that my 9- and 5-year-olds both could follow.

After reading, I set up the game cards in a six by four grid.

Download the cards I made here. Print two sets on heavy weight cardstock. If you can see through the cards, glue a thin piece of scrapbook paper to the back. Laminate for added durability if you anticipate lots of use.

Shuffle and arrange face down. Let your child turn over two of the cards. If they're a match, they'll keep the cards, setting them aside in a pile and go again.

If they are not a match, they must turn the cards back over and play moves to their opponent. The game continues like this until all the cards have been matched. The player with the most sets of matched cards wins!

Monday, January 12, 2015

There were so many great ideas last week ... posts on everything from computer coding to art, arithmetic, learning styles, life lessons, and phonics. Here are just a few of the amazing ideas and activities shared.

We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventuresthat you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, home school, or on the weekend!

When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up, you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board and feature an image on our After School Party in the upcoming weeks!

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Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational blog content may not be republished elsewhere without express written permission from the blog owner. Free printables are for your use at home and in the classroom, NOT for resale. If you have questions regarding this policy, contact deceptivelyeducational (at) gmail.com.

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